Indie music has grown to include so much. It’s not just music that is released on independent labels, but speaks to an aesthetic that deviates from the norm and follows its own weirdo heart. It can come in the form of rock music, pop, or folk. In a sense, it says as much about the people that are drawn to it as it does about the people that make it.
Every week, Uproxx is rounding up the best new indie music from the past seven days. This week, we got new music from Waxahatchee, Adrianne Lenker, Rosali, and more.
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Waxahatchee – Tigers Blood
As of late, indie rock has been mining the sounds of country in many ways. From Hurray For The Riff Raff’s nomadic folk to Wednesday’s alt-country-meets-deafening-shoegaze, the trend is hard not to notice. Since 2020’s Saint Cloud, Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield has been at the vanguard of it. Hailing from Alabama and now residing in Kansas City, Crutchfield draws from musicians like Lucinda Williams and Gillian Welch to infuse her new record, Tigers Blood, with their forthright storytelling. Collaborating with artists like MJ Lenderman, the Cook brothers, and Spencer Tweedy, Waxahatchee continues leading indie rock’s charge into twangier terrain.
Rosali – Bite Down
Rosali Middleman, a recent Merge Records signee who has relocated from Philadelphia to North Carolina, makes incredible indie-folk music. That sentence contains plenty of traits found in a lot of contemporary indie rock (see: Philly, North Carolina, folk), but Rosali happens to excel at crafting engrossing, unvarnished contemporary indie rock. Her new album, Bite Down, is disarming despite its simplicity, locked-in despite its looseness. It’s all amplified by Rosali’s backing band, the Omaha-based David Nance & Mowed Sound plus Destroyer keyboardist Ted Bois. The end result is one of the best indie-folk records of the year so far.
Adrianne Lenker – Bright Future
Big Thief’s music is often recognized for its ramshackle, freewheeling character. Frontwoman Adrianne Lenker, however, centers her particular work on carefully constructed songwriting, attentive to its structure and instrumentation. For Bright Future, her heart-wrenchingly gorgeous new solo album, she wrote these 12 songs for a sparse palette of acoustic guitar, piano, and violin. On top of it all is Lenker’s warm timbre, which recedes from and advances toward the mic, reflecting the natural beauty that adorns so much of her craft.
Nourished By Time – Catching Chickens
Named after the endurance-test scene from the second Rocky film, Catching Chickens finds Marcus Brown at the apex of their indie fame. Following up last year’s breakthrough Erotic Probiotic 2, Catching Chickens is an entrancing mix of ’90s R&B and new jack swing anchored by Brown’s alluring baritone. Nourished By Time’s latest work ensures the Baltimore artist retains their place at the proverbial throne of underground indie-pop.
Wild Pink – Strawberry Eraser
Wild Pink’s new EP, Strawberry Eraser, ends on a wordless cliffhanger. “Cielo Wheed,” the closing instrumental track from the surprise release, indicates a future path that bandleader John Ross has not yet taken. As a songwriter known for his poetic turns of phrase and heartland-rock-adjacent compositions, the fuzzed-out, minute-long “Cielo Wheed” charts new territory for Wild Pink. Normally, the New York band’s music is predicated on sparkling synthesizers, Ross’ soft, wistful voice, and bright, scintillating production. Strawberry Eraser‘s three tracks, including pre-released single “Air Drumming Fix You,” showcase a new side of Ross’ artistry, one that exhumes splendor from gritty textures.
Hot Mulligan – “Stickers Of Brian”
Hot Mulligan released one of the best emo albums of last year with Why Would I Watch, a record whose loquacious, dadaist song titles accurately conveyed the frenetic aura of the tunes themselves. Speaking of lengthy song titles, the Michigan group is opening for Fall Out Boy on an arena tour, and their new single, the one-off “Stickers Of Brian,” will certainly fill up those spacious arenas nicely. At the nexus of pop-punk, screamo, and indie rock, Hot Mulligan stay true to their hyperactive ethos on “Stickers Of Brian.”
Two Shell / FKA Twigs – “Talk To Me”
On her best-known work, FKA Twigs’ cooing voice dances lithely through sonic tapestries, just as she’s capable of doing in real life. “Talk To Me,” a collaboration between Twigs and the lightheartedly enigmatic dance duo Two Shell, achieves a similar feat. Her voice weaves in and out of the mix, but the spectral orchestrations of Magdalene and sparse abstractions of LP1 have been replaced by a four-on-the-floor Eurodance beat. “Talk To Me” is a gristly, clubby track, and its deft pace feels wonderfully novel for an artist who often luxuriates in slower tempos.
One Step Closer – “Giant’s Despair”
One Step Closer meets at the confluence of emo and hardcore, demonstrating how the two genres often overlap like a musical Venn diagram. With their 2021 debut, This Place You Know, the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania crew traced the outlines of hardcore while simultaneously expanding upon them, showcasing where the scene could soon go. All You Embrace, coming May 17, furthers that vision. On the latest single, the penultimate track “Giant’s Despair,” OSC charges forward at a blistering pace, stretching the range of their sound without sacrificing its emotional, catchy core. It’s another portrait of One Step Closer illustrating what they’re capable of.
King Isis – Shed
Snakes shed their skin mostly for comfort. When their organs expand, a new layer of skin begins growing underneath the current one so that the snake can expel any sense of epidermal claustrophobia. On Shed, the latest EP from recent Dirty Hit signee King Isis, the Oakland artist discards whatever doesn’t behoove them. Whereas their previous EP, last year’s Scales, glistened with its incandescent production choices, Shed, billed as its companion piece, relishes in the darkness hiding underneath. It’s a shift that suits Isis’ lower register and moody subject matter. Drawing from grunge and noise-pop, all while locked into a hook-heavy songwriting philosophy, King Isis emerges as a bright new voice.
The Jesus And Mary Chain – Glasgow Eyes
Everyone from Jimmy Eat World to Death Cab For Cutie has given The Jesus And Mary Chain a shoutout in their lyrics. Add another artist to that list: The Jesus And Mary Chain. Brothers Jim and William Reid are celebrating 40 years of their band with a whimsically self-referential record, Glasgow Eyes. On songs like “Jamcod,” “Second Of June,” and “Hey Lou Reid,” the Scottish alt-rock heroes humor their meta-textual penchants to a shameless extent. While it may read as self-indulgent in less practiced hands, classic albums like Psychocandy, Darklands, and Automatic have given the JAMC carte blanche. They aren’t reinventing the wheel, but it’s worth acknowledging that they helped build the wheel in the first place. This discordant, triumphant record is a worthy commemoration of a band that has shaped noise-pop as we know it.